Hi, folks! I’m new here. I’m getting back into recording and whatnot. I’m not really known for having great mixing skills, but I’m considering taking some 24/48 files and upsampling them to 32/96 because I prefer to work that way, lately. What conversion process/software do you recommend to upsample with the least amount of artifacts?
Out of curiosity, what DAW are you using? Most DAWs will convert for you without a problem 
Cubase 9. It will upsample. But, I know that I am a bit picky. After looking at the comparisons of how diff. programs handle audio, I kinda abandoned using Cubase for conversion…
I believe, if it was recorded at 24/48 , upsampling is not going to “improve” the sound. It needs to be captured at 32/96 to have any benefit.
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It’d be cool to do a blind comparison of the different DAWs with how they convert. Maybe we’ll do that soon.
You’re correct. Probably where you’d hear the difference (although subtle) would be working with various plugins at that rate. But I’d think you’d lose a lot of that as you save to any format other than lossless.
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What does it exactly mean?
@wagz have you considered 88.2 instead? It’s exactly twice of the nyquist.
I’m not necessarily trying to “improve the sound” through upsampling. It’s more like a buffer zone or loss prevention, IMO. I’m doing it because of how I plan to manipulate the audio. I want to keep everything in floating point, with the ability to manipulate files a lot and bounce them without going back and forth between 24 bit and 32 bit floating. Also, I run my N4 libraries @96khz. I think that some plugins sound better @ 96khz. I should mention that I already have a process, but I was actually wondering how others would handle this process. I haven’t really made any music in a long time. Sorry if the question is weird.
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[quote=“Arber87, post:7, topic:446”]
@wagz have you considered 88.2 instead? It’s exactly twice of the nyquist.
[/quote]Yeah. I used to record in 88.2, but I prefer 96khz on many instruments, typically.
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I personally wouldn’t bother up-sampling from if you’re given 48k, but that’s just my taste. I had an excellent prof in college that covered a lot of the sampling and bit-depth material, dude was a brain with a penchant for mastering classical music.
@holster Try this Sample Rate Conversion website for seeing the different up/down sampling logs? It’s a bit dated because PT only goes to version 10, but I looked through and it seems that DAWs don’t update that particular algorithm too often.
I think the main thing I would draw from the research is that I wouldn’t use Cubase for sample conversion? But PT stock doesn’t seem to be top notch either. I’ve been usually going with Izotope if I’m in PT, but I’ll also use the nice Pyramix SRC if I’m in mastering mode.
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Your daw will convert to 32 or 64 bit floating point as you work with the file(process), you do not need to “upsample” yourself.
Example , with the mix contest files, they were recorded at 24/48. After I downloaded them into my daw, studio one, which has 64 bit processing. I did not have to change anything to get the “benefit” from that. Whatever the processing power 32 or 64 (floating point) your daw has, you do not need to do anything about it.
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I remember i once used this to convert a bunch of mp3 samples into wav. You might as well give it a try:
Dang! That is amazing! VERY comprehensive and a great find. Thank you!!!
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Not a problem! My mastering prof loved data (he is regional head for AES in Nashville), so we went through and compared DAWs and discovered some really nice surprises (some rude awakenings, too).
Yeah. On that SRC site, you can see that Cubase doesn’t exactly handle conversion in the most transparent way.
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not many that I though would, actually do. Which was a bit surprising!
I tend to use SOX - converting through foobar2000. For a free converter, I think it is much better than many of the others.
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FooBar SSRC looks like an incredible sample converter! I’mma have to get that one!
@Taomine i have been aware of that study since 2014. I suggested that for two reasons:
- It’s free
- It can convert a batch of files while you are sleeping at night and still a snare will be a snare in the morning.
I know it’s not the cleanest of converters, but he is converting samples which are probably taken from another record.
Sincerely,
Arber